Illegal gun possession pervasive in Palestinian lands

HEBRON, West Bank (AP) - Pistol tucked neatly into the waistband of his tailored trousers, the Palestinian weapons merchant bemoaned the fact that handgun sales have been slow lately.

That's partly because Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority - at Israel's insistence - has been trying to curb the spread of illegal arms.

So this man's customers are leery of spending big money on an unlicensed gun that might wind up being confiscated by Palestinian police.

But the main problem, the merchant said, is simple market saturation: Almost everyone in the Palestinian lands who wants a gun already has one.

Illegal arms have been a key point of contention as Israel and the Palestinians struggle to reach a land-for-peace accord at U.S.-brokered talks at a retreat on Maryland's eastern shore.

Israel makes much of the fact that its army regularly seizes large amounts of weaponry - ranging from handguns to grenade-launchers - being smuggled in from neighboring Jordan and Egypt, or stockpiled in caches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Palestinian security officials, though, claim they get little credit for what has been a serious effort to clamp down on illegal weapons sales.

And the Palestinians have consistently demanded that disarming militants should work both ways: armed Jewish settlers, they say, pose a far greater threat to Palestinian civilians than vice versa.

Settlers living in the West Bank and Gaza can easily obtain gun licenses.

Many carry their weapons everywhere, and do not hesitate to use them when they feel threatened.

A month ago, a settler shot a 17-year-old Palestinian to death and seriously wounded a second in the West Bank town of Beitunia. The settler said the youths stoned his car; witnesses said the boys were only walking home.

Two settlers were gunned down in August as they patrolled the remote West Bank settlement of Itzhar, and another was slain in April in a dispute with Palestinian shepherds outside the settlement of Maon.

"What's happening in the territories may sometimes remind you of the Wild West," said Simha Landau, a criminologist on the law faculty at Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

If the Palestinian lands are awash in weaponry, so is Israel. There's little question the gun culture is a major factor on both sides of the dividing line.

Palestinians who want unlicensed weapons pay dearly for them. An illegal handgun runs at least $1,000, and sometimes two or three times that - enormous sums in the Palestinian lands, where unemployment is high.